A/N:

1. I do not own the NCIS characters.

2. This story takes place in the fall of 2001 and references are made to real-life events.

3. If you've read David Simon's Homicide: A year on the Killing Streets, or seen the series derived from the book, Homicide, and you think there's a bit of an homage here, you're right. If you haven't tried either, please do.

4. I haven't been in the military or in law enforcement, so please excuse any errors.

5. I've made Baltimore, a city I know and love, sound pretty rotten, but it has many great neighborhoods and attractions. I'm sorry, hun.

1 The universe does not take hints

August is traditionally the silly season in Washington, DC. Perhaps it's the double dose of heat and humidity, sometimes with an added twist of drought. Perhaps it's the absence of elected officials, who have the good sense to head for milder climes and hopefully generous donors at pig-pickings, fish fries, and traditional chicken dinners.

2001 was no exception. The city was convulsed over the disappearance of Chandra Levy, a comely young intern who had (allegedly) risen from a Congressman's bed and disappeared into the wilds of Rock Creek Park. The city, and the rest of the country, was alarmed by shark attacks and annoyed by poor service on airlines. Congress had skedaddled with a promise to give the airlines a good swift kick in September. No one was doing much about the sharks, but there was a lot of breathless coverage on ZNN.

The Chandra Levy mess was consuming the time and resources of virtually every law enforcement agency in the city—and there were a lot of law enforcement agencies in DC. Everyone from the FBI to Metro to the Park Police had a piece of the scandal pie, whether they wanted it or not. Gibbs was treated to occasional late night calls from Tobias Fornell, whining about the indignity of dodging paparazzi while trailing Congressional aides. Gibbs suspected that Fornell really wanted to whine about his soon-to-be-ex-wife Diane. Gibbs also suspected that Fornell was in deep denial about just soon that ex status was likely to occur, so he listened with something like patience, meaning he left the phone on but down on the table while he kept working on his boat.

NCIS was perhaps the only law enforcement agency that hadn't been pressed into the search for Levy, and experienced agents, watching the news reports of hapless Metro officers tramping through Rock Creek Park, shared a raised eyebrow and a sigh of relief. "You don't think they'll accidentally find a dead Marine in there, do you?" Pacci asked one day.

"I doubt they'll find the creek," Gibbs said. He had no high opinion of Metro.

But the NCIS office was under a different sort of siege. The entire building was being rewired for the 21st century, with fiber-optic high-speed internet thingies, new computers, and enormous flat screen monitors throughout the squadroom. The renovations had begun in the sub-basements, and Abby was thrilled with her new equipment. When she wasn't working she was looking at her most gruesome slides of ruptured body parts, rare mold spores, and odd weapons on the high-def screen, and tinkering with a new version of Photoshop. Some of the results were—interesting. Colorful, at least.

Gibbs was mostly annoyed by the whole thing. He wasn't fond of his old computer and didn't expect the new one to be any better—worse, almost certainly, because if it was capable of doing more things he'd be expected to do more things with it. And he really didn't see the point of the big screens.

"Higher resolution," Abby said. "You can display something from your computer, like if I email you a fiber, and see it larger and much more clearly."

"Most of what we look at are service records and license photos," Gibbs said. "I can see them well enough on my computer." If he could actually learn how to open an attachment.

"You just don't want to learn to work the new remote," Abby said.

True enough. There had been a demonstration a few weeks ago in the conference room, with an eager tech pressing a button here and there to zero in and enlarge individual items. But when Gibbs looked at the remote later on there didn't seem to be "zero in" or "enlarge" buttons, much less any way to tell it which thingy to enlarge. What a waste of money.

It was bad enough to come in in the morning, pull out your chair, and realize some tech monkey was under your desk, muttering about the unstable T1 connection. But the squadroom was being recarpeted and painted as well, in agonizingly slow stages. The carpet guys didn't come on the same days as the painting guys, and neither group seemed to work on Monday, Thursday, Friday, or alternate Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It seemed as if the squadroom would be layered in drop cloths, dust, and piles of carpet squares until 2002.

And the color…Gibbs had no fashion sense and was proud of it, and even he knew the color was a disaster. Director Morrow, not given to outbursts, had taken one look at a finished spot and flushed dark red. Allegedly some angry phone calls had been made. But even Morrow, canny bureaucratic infighter that he was, lost that war. "We're a law enforcement agency," he'd said at the latest staff meeting. "Perhaps international safety orange is appropriate." So the walls slowly—very slowly—got more pumpkiny.

Other changes were being talked about. It was policy for agents to work in pairs, with a more senior agent typically taking a newer agent under his wing and showing the ropes. There was talk of developing a three-man or even a four-man team to handle major cases; there was also talk of investing in specially-designed trucks loaded with evidence gathering equipment, like other departments had.

But it seemed to be mostly talk. In the last few years the agency had occasionally strayed far from its more traditional responsibilities. Major resources had been poured into the Khobar Towers bombing in the last five years and into investigating the bombing of the USS Cole the previous year. Gibbs had had a piece of both of those investigations, and he'd also spent time in Europe undercover, doing some things that he wasn't all that proud of and working with some people about whom he'd developed powerfully mixed feelings. Around the agency, and in Gibbs in particular, there was a sense that it was time to get back to the basic business of investigating crimes involving sailors and Marines. They'd gotten the new electronic toys that every agency was getting, but it didn't seem likely that other new things, like special teams or trucks, would be forthcoming.

Gibbs didn't think much of the three-man or four-man team ideas. A good two-man team should be capable of handling just about anything short of a Khobar Towers situation. But these days Gibbs was mostly a one-man team, as Stan Burley had left nearly five months ago to take an agent afloat slot. Pacci was at loose ends at the moment too, as his latest probie had been given a permanent placing in Norfolk. But Pacci, patient and soft-spoken and slow-moving, was well-suited to the job of easing a probie into the field, and he liked it. He had a fresh probie coming in on October 1, presuming she passed the FLETC final. Until then, he was available to partner up with Gibbs when necessary.

Morrow had been generous initially, telling Gibbs that he'd give him latitude in picking a candidate. The problem was that Gibbs didn't quite know what he wanted in a candidate. No, that wasn't the problem. Gibbs knew what he wanted, and it wasn't a probie, however damned high the FLETC scores were. Stan Burley had been top of his class, and he'd been a good young man. But it had taken three years for him to stop stepping on things at crime scenes or to take enough photos. (It had taken even longer before anyone had gotten around to reminding Gibbs that it was Stan and not Steve, but that was another matter.) Burley had done a good job of eventually learning to anticipate what Gibbs would want done next, and he'd turned into a pretty good agent, but somehow he'd never quite developed the—what? Nose? Gut? Something.

Gibbs wanted someone who wasn't a probie, who could work a crime scene and handle a gun and keep his wits when things got hairy. It would also be helpful if he could work the remote. But it would also have to be someone smart enough to realize he still had things to learn, and a willingness to learn from someone without much patience. Gibbs had learned his trade from a master, and he'd picked up a few things more on his own, and he wanted to be sure that what he'd learned got passed on. But his methods weren't gentle like Pacci's. You could learn a lot more from Gibbs, but you couldn't expect an easy time of it. Towards the end Burley had been drinking more Pepto than coffee.

He'd been keeping his eyes open every time he worked outside the agency, but he hadn't seen anyone that impressed. Metro seemed sad where it didn't seem flat-out incompetent, and the suburban forces were, well, suburban, pleasant and slow. He'd even found himself casting glances at Fornell's people—not a good experience. How did FBI agents manage to be both smug and dull at the same time? And where did they all get those awful suits? And why did they all look the same?

Morrow's assistant had kindly transferred applicant files to Gibbs. He'd looked through them but found it impossible to get a sense from paperwork whether what he needed was there. The agency wasn't exactly generous with travel money for applicants. The Pile grew to the point where it threatened the life of any tech monkey unlucky enough to crawl under Gibbs's desk, and it would probably topple when the carpet tile layers got there.

And Morrow was running out of patience. The other day he'd mentioned, again, that a new crop of FLETC candidates would be available October 1. If Gibbs didn't have a candidate by then, Morrow suggested, perhaps the wisest choice would be to just assign him a new FLETC grad. Of course, Morrow said a bit sadly, the most promising candidates would already have offers. Unspoken was the likelihood that Gibbs would spend the next year or five with some kid who couldn't tie his shoes, much less handle a gun without shooting himself or Gibbs.

"You'll find the right guy," Abby said. "If you want something new to come into your life, Gibbs, you have to prepare yourself. Open yourself to possibilities, and one will walk through the door."

"I'm open," Gibbs said. "I've looked at least fifty files."

"You're the least open person I've ever met. Perhaps you should try meditation. Or yoga. To open your third eye."

"I don't have a third eye, Abby."

"Of course you do. You just call it your gut. Okay, meditation's probably not the right thing for you. Or yoga. You have chakras, too, but you're not ready to accept that. Maybe tai chi is the ticket."

"Is that some kind of soup?"

"It's an ancient Chinese form of exercise. Slow, repetitive movements, using rhythm and balance. You see people doing it on the Mall sometimes."

"Those old people in pajamas?"

"It's ancient wisdom, Gibbs. Openness, remember?"

"I'm not dancing on the Mall in my pajamas."

Abby sighed. "Let's try a visualization exercise. Picture your perfect candidate. Focus on that. Focusing your mind is like sending a signal out into the universe, so it can be picked up. What do you see?"

"Someone quiet," Gibbs said. Abby, bless her heart, didn't take the hint. The universe didn't take it, either.